[Marxism] From War Times

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Friends,

Cindy Sheehan's vigil outside George Bush's vacation ranch in Crawford,
Texas has ignited a new wave of antiwar activism across the country.
Protests demanding that the President talk to Cindy and BRING THE TROOPS
HOME NOW are underway in cities and towns nationwide. Public opinions polls
show opposition to Bush's policy in Iraq is higher than ever: Newsweek
reports 61% disapproval - up from 54% a month ago - and USA Today/Gallup
reports that a record 57% say the Iraq war has made the U.S. more
vulnerable to terrorism. Only 34% say it has made the country safer.

Cindy will be speaking at the massive anti-war protest in Washington, D.C.
sponsored by United for Peace and Justice on September 24. This may be the
most important anti-war demonstration yet. Make your plans now to join
Cindy and thousands in D.C., and please go to http://unitedforpeace.org to
get more information or download outreach materials.

Outreach and educational flyers in both English and Spanish are also
available at the War Times website, http://war-times.org - you can
download, copy and distribute "Courage, Conscience: U.S. Soldiers Say No to
War," "Iraq: 'Stay the Course' or Get Out Now?," "Be All You Can Be: Don't
Enlist" or "Help Stop Torture - Raise Your Voice."

The August installment of our "Month in Review" feature is also newly
posted. It offers a brief recap of the last 30 days' developments in the
so-called "war on terror," from "Iraq on the Brink" to "Sharon and Gaza:
Bait and Switch." An  excerpt from this feature is below; e-mail
info@xxxxxxxxxxxxx if you would like to have the full text in Word format.

War Times/Tiempo de Guerras is a fiscally sponsored project of the Center
for Third World Organizing. As an all-volunteer, internet-based project, we
operate on a bare-bones budget, but we are in need of funds. It will be a
little while yet before we can receive donations on-line; in the meanwhile,
checks sent to War Times at this address are tremendously appreciated (and
tax-deductible!): War Times/Tiempo de Guerras, c/o P.O. Box 99096,
Emeryville, CA 94662.

Thanks, peace, and please forward this e-mail to a friend!

The War Times/Tiempo de Guerras Staff
---

Washington's Wars and Occupations:
Month in Review #4
August 18, 2005
By Max Elbaum, War Times/Tiempo de Guerras

BUSH'S IRAQ POLICY: DISASTER IN IRAQ, SURGING OPPOSITION AT HOME

Despite intense U.S. pressure, the committee charged with writing a new
Iraqi Constitution failed to meet its August 15 deadline for submitting a
final draft to parliament. The failure is an embarrassment for the Bush
administration, which had been hyping the anticipated draft as the latest
in its long string of (failed) "turning points."

Even before this setback, Bush's troubles regarding Iraq had grown worse
than ever. The disaster caused by the U.S. invasion/occupation is no longer
denied even by officials implementing Bush's policy. A startling article on
the front page of the August 14 Washington Post laid it out:

"The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can
be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the U.S. will have to settle for far
less progress than originally envisioned, according to U.S. officials in
Washington and Baghdad. The U.S. no longer expects to see a model new
democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the
majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges,
U.S. officials say. 'What we expected to achieve was never realistic given
the timetable or what unfolded on the ground,' said a
senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. 'We are in a
process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the
unreality that dominated at the beginning.'"

These "senior officials" do not focus on U.S. or Iraqi casualties - more
than 1,855 U.S. troops and at least 23,000 (with some estimates many times
higher) Iraqis killed. They don't stress the economic and physical
devastation caused by the invasion as the reason for alarm. There are no
apologies for all the lies told and human lives destroyed. But it is still
a significant jolt to see key players on Bush's team admit there is zero
chance they can achieve their original aims in Iraq.

They are also losing the battle for public opinion at home. Early August
public opinion polls showed disapproval of Bush's Iraq policy higher than
ever. A Newsweek poll put disapproval at 61%, up from 54% a month ago.
According to USA Today/Gallup, a record 57% say the Iraq war has made the
U.S. more vulnerable to terrorism. Only 34% say it has made the country safer.

CINDY SHEEHAN, THE AFL-CIO & THE ROLLING STONES

This surge of discontent is both driven by, and reflected in, such events as:

 *Cindy Sheehan, mother of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq, is in her second
week camped out by the side of a road near Bush's Crawford, Texas ranch.
Sheehan continued to demand a personal meeting with the President while
spreading her "Bring the Troops Home Now" message far and wide. Attracting
sympathetic media coverage from outlets long closed to antiwar viewpoints
(as well as sparking a desperate right-wing smear campaign), Sheehan's
vigil is spearheading a revival of grassroots antiwar activism all across
the country.

 *Amid cheers for speaker after speaker denouncing Bush's Iraq adventure,
the AFL-CIO approved an unprecedented resolution calling for the "rapid"
withdrawal of US troops from Iraq on the second day of its late-July
national convention.

 *The Rolling Stones pilloried Bush's policies in the lyrics to "Sweet Neo
Con" a featured song on their new CD "A Bigger Bang": You call yourself a
Christian, I call you a hypocrite/You call yourself a patriot, well I think
you're full of ---     It's liberty for all, democracy's our style/Unless
you are against us, then it's prison without trial.

 *Anxious Republicans, fearful of being punished in the 2006 mid-term
elections, are desperately seeking ways of dampening public discontent
about Iraq while still supporting Bush. A series of trial balloons about
big withdrawals of U.S. troops in "early 2006" have been driven largely by
this anxiety. But all such predictions were carefully hedged. And August 13
Bush undermined them by re-emphasizing his commitment to "stay the course
until our job is done."

In other words, despite being forced to "lower expectations," the
administration is still absolutely determined to keep a permanent military
presence in Iraq. And so are key figures at the top levels of the
Democratic Party, from Hillary Clinton to John Kerry and Delaware Senator
Joseph Biden. Reasserting that Democrats have the "backbone" to employ
military force, this entrenched sector of the Democratic leadership shares
Bush's opposition to getting out of Iraq. They likewise share his
insistence on keeping control of that country on matters most central to
Washington's global "interests," oil first and foremost. It will thus take
much more aggressive efforts by the antiwar movement to translate growing
popular opposition into a political force strong enough to get the U.S. out.

The momentum of today's antiwar uptick (and peoples' increased openness to
fresh analyses during such times) offers activists opportunities across the
board. On a host of issues directly and indirectly related to Bush's "war
on terror" there is a tremendous gap between the grave dangers humanity
faces vs. the narrow range of U.S. mainstream political debate: Nuclear
proliferation and Bush's policies of unilateral nuclear buildup. Israel's
continuing effort to impose a unilateral "settlement" on the Palestinians.
The racist assault on immigrant and people of color communities, Arabs and
Muslims in particular. Global warming and its direct relationship to U.S.
energy, economic and empire-building policies. All these and more require
attention even as the antiwar movement hones in on Iraq as the most
immediately vulnerable point in Bush's reactionary global agenda.

For the full text of this August 2005 Month in Review, including items
under the subheads below, go to http://war-times.org

IRAQ ON THE BRINK
SHARON AND GAZA: BAIT AND SWITCH
IN GAZA AND IRAQ, WOMEN BEAR THE BRUNT
NUCLEAR STAND-OFFS, IRAN AND NORTH KOREA
TORTURE CONTINUES


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